Why is the Family “the Most Desperate Battlefield”?

Why is it that almost every area of cultural insanity seems like a sniper’s bullet aimed right at the heart of FAMILY? … Schools pushing gender confusion and racial division, while keeping parents unaware. Medical policies severing parent’s rights to protect and guide their children. Welfare incentives promoting fatherless homes. The ‘choice industry’ making billions, lying to women that they’ll be better off simply ‘erasing’ their unborn child. And governments making it harder for faith-centered agencies to place adoptions and foster kids into traditional, intact families. 

The reason is, strong families are a threat to those who want control. 

Intact Families are the goal for one amazing organization in Arizona -- Christian Family Care. Their President, Mark Upton allowed us to share parts of an eye-opening message that will remind you what we’re fighting to protect. ~ Kim 

Before the formation of the government and the church God created the family for the raising up and training of children. Since creation, it has been the intact family that is in right relationship with God that has driven the health and wealth of nations, of society.  

When we set a twenty-year vision of ‘every child loved and nurtured in a Christ-centered family’ we recognized that there are two critical elements for sustaining and growing the welfare of our communities. Those two critical elements are the intact family, and a relationship with God.  

Throughout history, no society has proven it can flourish without intact families. It is the intact family that leads to human flourishing, economic growth, and healthy communities. When children are raised in households of a married mother and father in relationship with the Triune God children grow and flourish into adulthood as positive contributors to society.   

The Problem: 

The story of the Bible illustrates the close tie between family breakdown and spiritual breakdown…. The family needs to be restored and it will take Christians with conviction and commitment. Christians willing to be distinct from culture.   

“America has become a nation more deeply divided than it has ever been, a nation whose citizens have been pulled apart – personally, socially, morally, economically, ideologically, and politically – by the unprecedented disintegration of the nation’s marital and family life.” ii   

Researchers on child abuse have discerned a clear association between physical abuse of children and deviance from normative family structure. 42% of households in disadvantaged neighborhoods are headed by single females. Premarital pregnancy, illegitimacy, and absence of the child’s father are among the most common “precursors of baby battering”…. 

We all want our children and grandchildren to grow and learn and become contributors to society. Research demonstrates that intact, married families, of a mother and father, provide the greatest opportunity for every child to succeed. Children of intact families have higher achievement scores in reading and math, more engaged in positive behavioral outcomes in school, and more likely to engage in church and graduate from college than any other family structure (single parent, stepparent, blended families, or no parent).“ iii 

Throughout America’s history, the family has been the driver of our economy, of wealth creation, producing both physical and human capital to create and sustain a strong GDP. Economic growth is a fraction of what it was in the pre-1960’s era because of the breakdown of the family.  We cannot financially support our needs as they once could. The long-range solution to our economic difficulties is to grow intact married families rather than growing government.” iv 

Why Christian Family Care? 
What if our child welfare systems, early childhood and local school systems, and major employers in Arizona knew that Christian Family Care and its church partners are the first place willing to help families and children in crisis?  

For more than 40 years, CFC has served children in communities throughout Arizona where families are fractured, and abuse and neglect has been the highest. Communities where children have suffered tremendous emotional and physical trauma. We have stood firm in our Christian convictions, holding firm to God’s design for the family.  

This hands-on knowledge of our communities and the changing environment of family structures, and increasing interference of government, and media presents an opportunity and a need for us to sharpen our focus to build relationships that will preserve and restore the family before our society totally crumbles.  

Literary critic Alvin Kernan has remarked that in the firestorm of recent social change in America, “the family is probably the most desperate battlefield[ii].”  

We agree! With the expertise God has provided CFC we believe we can affect change by focusing on: 1) Serving children in foster care, 2) Providing family support services both to children and parents directly in the community bypassing government, and 3) Growing our early childhood education program. 

(Please learn more and help the critical work Christian Family Care is doing to strengthen Arizona families! ~ Kim) 

i. Marriage and Religion Research Institute, Our Fiscal Crisis: We cannot Tax, Spend, and Borrow enough to substitute for Marriage, June 2011, RS11FO1 

ii. Bryce Christensen, Divided We Fall, Family Discord and the Fracturing of America (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 2 

iii. Marri.us/marriage-structure-education 

iv. Marriage and Religion Research Institute, Our Fiscal Crisis: We cannot Tax, Spend, and Borrow enough to substitute for Marriage, June 2011, RS11FO1